EVENTS

We run an extensive program of lectures, workshops, tours and group meetings which are open to everyone. We also hold member-only webinars and members receive a discount on our events.

The program

A new program is released every three months. You can view the current events below.

Browse in List view or change it to Calendar view to see what’s on in each month.

ONLINE DELIVERY

Due to restrictions on events as part of the COVID19 response, all of our events are currently being delivered online using Gotowebinar, Gotomeeting or Zoom (depending on the nature of the event). We are planning on the assumption that restrictions on live events may well be in place for the rest of 2020 and we are committed to continuing to provide you with a great range of genealogy events.

When you register for an event, the confirmation email will contain information about how to join the event online. In many cases, this will require you to complete a further step of registering with Gotowebinar. If you have not used Gotowebinar before, you can find information about it on our website here.

With the exception of some DNA events where there may be privacy issues, all of our webinars are recorded, so even if you cannot attend at the scheduled time you can still book and receive the recording provided you remember to complete the second registration step with Gotowebinar. If a webinar is booked out, you can contact the office and purchase a link to the recording a couple of days after the event.

Our subscription to Gotowebinar has a limit of 100 people attending a webinar live. This means that it is the first 100 people to log in for the webinar who get to attend it live. Since the shutdown in response to COVID 19, we have experienced an increased interest in our webinars and that limit of 100 live attendees may be reached on some occasions. If you do not manage to get into a webinar on the day, please be assured that you will still receive the recording link to watch later.

Because of these changes in the delivery of our events, we have decided to open up our webinar program to non-members as well as members. However, non-members will pay a bit more and season tickets remain available only to members. We will also be providing an occasional free webinar for members only.

Registration types: The member category is used by members of the Society. Members must be logged in to make a booking. The complimentary category used by volunteers or new members if they receive an offer of a free event, and by presenters of the sessions. Everyone else should book using the non-member category.

Upcoming events

By booking a Webinar Season Ticket you will be able to view every standard webinar we hold between May-July 2020, either live or by watching the recording later. You book and pay once. We'll set you up in each webinar and send you the confirmation link. And in addition you'll get one webinar free - so this quarter you get 6 for the price of 5.

Just started your family history or need a refresher? The Family History Fundamentals course is a three part online course being held on Thursday 7 May, 28 May and 18 June, from 10.30am-12.30pm. Full details of each session can be found in the individual listings for those sessions. Book using this listing if you wish to attend all three sessions at the discounted price.

Show and tell: The facts are not the story. The facts inform the story. It is important to show your audience what happened, rather than telling them the facts in a list. Leonie Bell will discuss some simple techniques to create an interesting story. Newcomers welcome.

Death records provide a wealth of information for the family historian, from dates to causes of death and property. This lecture explores death records held in the NSW State Archives Collection and how to find them.

Get together with others who have ancestors from Jamaica, Barbados and other localities within the Caribbean, or just have a research interest in those areas. Discuss research strategies and resources, and swap ideas and knowledge.

This is not a lecture but there will be some short presentations. Future gatherings will occur if there is sufficient interest. All welcome.

The City of Sydney has a new Archives and History Resources system, which you can access via their website. City Archivist Janet Villata will provide an overview of the system and their collections, and provide tips to finding resources for your family history. (please note that this is a daytime webinar)

This session will cover tips and techniques for writing it up and sharing your family history with other researchers in a variety of forms, including charts, software, reports, books and online. It will also cover tips for making those dreaded source citations easier!

Get tips from an experienced DNA researcher on how to use the Family Tree DNA website and analyse your DNA results. This session is for people who have already had their autosomal DNA tested with Family Tree DNA and have received their results. This is a practical session, rather than just a lecture. It would be an advantage if you have two screens or two devices, so you can follow along with your own account, but it is not essential.

This is an online session. It will NOT be recorded, due to privacy reasons, so you should only book if you can attend live.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire covered all of what is now Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and significant portions of Romania, Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, and Italy. The multi-ethnic history of this empire provides many unique challenges to genealogists, so, in this presentation, we will be discussing the history, culture, and organization of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire to help identify places of origin and original records for your ancestors.

This webinar introduces the basics of photo restoration using the program Photoshop Elements. Learn how to repair scratches and tears, and how to bring out details in older photos, using some simple techniques. Managing your photo collection will also be discussed, along with how to add metadata and electronic watermarks to your photos for use on websites and social media.

Learn what can be done with your AncestryDNA results - exploring ethnicity and DNA cousins. We’ll also look at privacy setting, linking DNA to a family tree, sharing access to AncestryDNA results, uploading a family tree and downloading your Raw Data. We’ll look at some case studies along the way. There’ll be a handout to take away with plenty of references to continue your DNA journey.

This session will be recorded but the question and answer session at the end will not be recorded for privacy reasons.

No, not in England but here in Australia. Our ancestors would have had some pretty tough winters. In a three (3) minute story tell us how they survived. If you want to use a photo please email Lilian Magill before the meeting. Newcomers welcome.

Spelling variations, nicknames, Anglicisation and abbreviations can provide significant challenges in finding the right family member. Michelle covers these challenges, as well as search techniques and the value of Scottish and Irish inheritance naming patterns, to help you more easily find evidence about your ancestors.

In this session Ralph will explore the memorabilia of family holidays contained in the Society’s archives, including postcards, travel brochures, personal photos, diaries, scrapbooks. What stories do they tell and how can they enrich our family histories?

In this talk Chris Paton, author of Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records, takes us to pre-19th century Scotland, when things begin to get a little more complicated with our ancestral research. From kirk to state, a variety of records are available, but it's one thing to find them, and quite another to understand them, with different handwriting styles, language problems and the feudal nature of Scottish society some of the many challenges that keeps earlier Scottish research fun but challenging. Chris will explore the various record types available, and how to access them both online and offline.

Learnthe basic DNA concepts and the first steps of interpreting your DNA test results. This session covers all of the popular DNA testing companies. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

This is an online session.

Skill level: Beginners Presenter:Christine Woodlands

Note: Members need to be logged in to the site to make an event booking.

Now that SAG members have access to the SAG subscription to MyHeritage through the members’ area of the SAG website, join Rosemary Kopittke to find out about the records available and get her tips for searching.

Have you looked at your AncestryDNA matches and wondered how you’re related to all those people? Dana Leeds introduced her method of grouping matches into clusters in 2018. Since then, many of us have used the method with great success. This session will introduce you to using the features of AncestryDNA for grouping. If you’re planning to attend the session and haven’t used this feature, please contact Christine if you’re prepared for your AncestryDNA matches to be a case study for the session. There’ll be a handout to take away with all the useful links.

This session will not be recorded for privacy reasons, so you must attend live.

In this session, Chris Paton, author of Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (Second Edition), will explore how to access records for family history research available from his native Northern Ireland, whether they exist online, or at PRONI, Northern Ireland's dedciated national archive in Belfast. He'll explore the many resources available online, from vital records to land based research, what can be prepared for prior to a visit to the PRONI archive, and how to carry out research whilst there.